Review - Royal Ballet perform Romeo & Juliet

Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet
Royal Ballet, Barry Wordsworth conductor, Lauren Cuthbertson (Juliet) & Federico Bonelli (Romeo)

22 March 2012, Live cinema broadcast from the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden

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A dilemma for arts companies broadcasting concerts, operas and ballets live to cinemas is how to best package the cinema experience.  Is it trying to create as closely as possible the experience of those actually at the event, or should it recognise the differences and opportunities of cinema and be distinct?  I tried these broadcasts out last December with the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty and was pleasantly surprised.  The frisson of live performance was captured and enhanced by the focused cinema audience.  The advantages of the close ups of dancers, costumes and scenery showed how the modern camera can trump a pair of opera glasses in the hall.  Behind the scenes documentaries enhanced appreciation of the production as a traditional pre-concert talk would.


But this can go too far, as when the atmosphere was disturbed by deafening advertisements for Royal Ballet DVDs at intervals.  Too prosaically cinema for my liking.  And on that occasion by a tub-thumping promotion of the partnership of Lauren Cuthbertson and Sergei Polunin as worthy successors to Nureyev/Fontaine etc.

Prokofiev - also a chess fanatic

Things have not gone according to plan at Royal Ballet marketing.

Polunin left the Royal Ballet abruptly in January.  He was made the youngest principal dancer ever at 19 but said in interviews he wished to leave the punishing rehearsals and tedium of a ballet career.  So, on returning to the cinema for Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet it was Federico Bonelli dancing with Cuthbertson.



Bonelli was strikingly charismatic and engaged very naturally with Cuthbertson, who was most subtle in her acting of Juliet as she develops across the ballet.  Prokofiev's score remains as stunning as ever, culminating in the grindingly powerful final scene at the tomb. 


But one request please.  Can cinema-goers be spared enthusiastic live tweets scrolling across the bottom of the screen at the curtain calls.  They are one sure way to destroy the illusion that you are in decent mid-stalls seats at Covent Garden.

Review - Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall

Brahms: Tragic Overture, Op.81
Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op.21
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Symphonic Suite, Op.35

Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer

4 March 2012, Royal Festival Hall, London 

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Forced to choose, I would vote the Budapest Festival Orchestra the best you can hear. All the great orchestras pass through London but none that combine the highest technical standards with such verve and interpretative panache.  For all their virtues, the Berlin Philharmonic can seem a little too suavely cosmopolitan, at times over-rehearsed.  The Vienna Philharmonic unengaged and alarmingly variable.  When roused, it is the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam who deliver the same rich sound and personality, and even higher technical standards.  But it is the BFO that deliver an extra thrill with unexpected, fresh interpretations of even the most standard works and who always radiate love of music-making. 

They also have a tendency to play slightly retro programmes.  It's great to see staple repertoire from years past dredged up and presented with such commitment.  So here, the Brahms overture led into a violin show-piece - the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole.  It provided an opportunity for soloist Renaud Capucon to demonstrate an almost faultless technique and rock solid intonation.  He and Iván Fischer seemed intent on emphasising the serious qualities of the music although this could only go so far: there is no hiding the fact that it is shamelessly flashy.  The orchestra provided the characterful backdrop, while Capucon's 1737 violin (previously played by Isaac Stern) glittered, dazzled and stunned the audience.

The Brahms Tragic Overture that commenced proceedings was carefully shaped by Fischer, and in the final minutes packed a real emotional punch.  The Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherezade was predictably arresting in the BFO's hands.  Scheherezade adapts the Arabian 1001 nights stories into musical form, with the Sultan who has a bad habit of murdering his wives after one night represented by impatient brass entries, and the leader of the first violins adopting the role of Scheherezade who beguiles the Sultan with her stories so that her fate is put off for night after night.  The orchestra leader varied her contributions effectively so that Scheherezade's dark and urgent opening to the last movement was thrillingly contrasted.  She was paired very effectively at the front of stage with the excellent harpist.

Fischer opened the first movement of The Sea and Sinbad's Ship in daringly relaxed fashion.  The story is just starting, he was telling us.  The Kalendar Prince episode provided the usual opportunities for the woodwind to shine, and the oboist produced a matchless flow of super-creamy tone to stand out from his bassoon and flautist colleagues.  After a richly romantic Andantino, Fischer let the orchestra loose on the finale with breathless drive and stunning articulation.  The culmination, depicting a ship wrecked on a great rock, was equally driven and Fischer's literal approach here was a slight miscalculation where more breadth would have increased the impact of the climax.  But the hushed conclusion was marvellously handled, the solo violin harmonic floating high over the orchestra and finally drifting into nothingness, as if to suggest there were more stories to tell.

Fischer and his Budapest players were again setting the standard for the world's orchestras.